1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink supplying apparatus in a printer for dissolving a solid ink to a liquefied ink and then recording record information by using the liquefied ink.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is a printer for dissolving a solid ink to a liquefied ink and then performing a recording operation by using the liquefied ink. This kind of printer using the solid ink has such a merit that the utilization of the solid ink makes the maintenance easier and that the re-solidification of the ink on a record sheet reduces the bleeding of the ink to thereby perform the recording operation with a high image quality.
The method of actually recording by using the dissolved ink may tar include, for example, a method of using a record head of ink jet type. If using this method, it is possible to obtain the record result with the higher image quality.
In the above mentioned printer, it is typical that, while the record head is moved in a main scan direction of a record sheet, the record sheet is transported to a sub-scan direction to thereby perform the 2-dimensional recording operation. The solid ink is supplied to the record head by dropping the solid ink retained in an ink retainer section into an ink dissolving section disposed at the record head. Then, the recording operation is typically performed such that the supplied solid ink is heated and the thus dissolved ink is thermally maintained so as to keep it in the liquefied state.
In this type of printer, the ink retainer for retaining the solid inks retains the solid inks in a line. Then, they are pushed out from behind, one by one. Further, the pushed out solid inks are dripped below, for example, by using a bar-shaped supply lever, one drop at a time. Accordingly, they are supplied to the ink dissolving section located just under the ink retainer. When retaining the solid inks in a line, the solid inks adjacent to each other are retained in contact with each other.
However, according to the configuration of the ink retainer, the solid inks are in contact with each other, in the condition that they are retained. Thus, when the solid inks are heated by the radiation heat or emission heat from the ink dissolving section, they may be adhered to each other. This results in a problem that the solid inks may not be supplied by the supply lever, one by one.
Moreover, in the above mentioned printer, when supplementing new solid inks for the ink retainer in conjunction with the exhaustion of the solid inks in the ink retainer, a user supplements the solid inks, one by one. Hence, if the consumption amount of the inks are vast, the time it takes to supplement the solid inks becomes long, which results in a problem that the convenience is extremely degraded.
Furthermore, the user may become in direct contact with the solid ink when supplementing it. Thus, for example, when an ambient temperature of the solid ink is raised by a direct sunlight and the like, this results in a problem that the softened solid ink may be adhered to a cloth of the user or the like.